Sam can barely put into words his shock at hearing the news that my old mucker Eminem has had to cancel his Slane gig.
The Snort country estate is in a bit of a mess at the moment, what with your correspondent having had to spend most of the summer away on urgent business in Colombia, and since he was coming to Ireland anyway, my man Marshall had agreed to haul his chainsaw round to my place to cut down a few trees. And I’m sure we’d have found a use for his hoes too.
Unfortunately, it now looks like I will have to revert to Plan B – a brutal slash and burn philosophy of gardening which involves spraying all the fields with Agent Orange and napalming everything above six feet in height. Not very eco-friendly, you might say, but Mother Nature has great powers of regeneration and, anyway, they’re only fucking plants.
More to the point, why all the fuss about a cancelled gig?
That the Big E won’t actually get to do his thing at Slane is a matter of concern only to the promoters, Lord Henry, 80,000 fans and the kindly locals who charge 500 squid a minute so you can have the privilege of parking your car on a cowpat.
No-one else gives a fuck, and rightly so. Eminem may be able to rhyme a few words together but so could Pam Ayres and she never had to resort to the ‘white nigga’ schtick to pull a crowd.
I am, of course, very sorry to hear that the boy is addicted to dream potions but since I have always tended to nod off every time one of his whiney anthems comes on the radio, I figure this is a case of ‘what goes around, comes around’.
Southern Fried
Anyway, every cloud has a silver lining and, contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, I am delighted to announce that Slane will go ahead this year after all.
So as not to disappoint the many Eminem fans who feared they would have to go without their big day out in the country, the world’s most famous southern fried boogie band have stepped in at the last minute to save the day.
That’s right – my old muckers Foghat are on their way to Slane. Hurray!
And, rising to the occasion as they always do, they have agreed to rework their set to fit in with the demands of the day. As drummer (and percussionist) Manmountain Dense put it to me on the blower: “Sam, we know fuck all about rap and hippity hop and all that shite but we promise we’ll say ‘muthafucker’ between every song and to cut the bass solo down to at least five minutes. Or say six, if he takes one of his turns.”
But that’s not all.
Joining Foghat on the bill of bills will be legendary Welsh power trio Budgie, who haven’t played live since the era of Barry John and JPR Williams. Having turned down Live Aid, Live 8, the Amnesty Conspiracy of Hope tour and the Rose of Tralee, the Budgie boys knew that this was one gig they wouldn’t want to miss.
As they put it to me in an emotional missive, hand-written in green biro: “The price of the ferry over PLUS expenses? We’re there, Sam. PS Who is Enema?
And as if that wasn’t enough, Slane 2005 will also see the only live performance ever by the semi-legendary – not to say semi-conscious – Tonto’s Expanding Headband. From the bargain bin to one of the biggest festivals in Europe – it’s the stuff rock ‘n’ roll dreams are made of.
Last but not least, expect an all-star jam session involving members of the Pink Fairies, Fruup, Uriah Heep, Irish rock legends Cromwell (remember ‘Guinness Rock’? Me neither), the guitar tuner for Nazareth, somebody or other from Peter Frampton’s backing band, a bloke who left Steeleye Span just before they had their only hit, Italian giants of symphonic rock PFM, a local hippie who plays an ‘organic guitar’ he built out of courgettes, and A Very Special Surprise Guest.
World Music
A Very Special Surprise Guest, by the way, is the ingenious name of an up-and-coming multi-instrumental 17-piece heavy rock outfit whose mission statement is to “birth a new millennium hybrid of stone 70s rifferama with as little world music as we can possibly get away with short of actually strangling our didgeridoo player whose girlfriend’s da bought us our van”.
And they’re all coming to Slane! Although when I say Slane, I don’t actually mean the castle, which is far too obvious and clichéd a location for a major rock festival in the year 2005. But we have found a nice spot under the bridge which is not too wet or excessively draughty and where everybody can enjoy watching the river flow in the event of any or all of our acts failing to show because of exhaustion or lack of interest or an eruption of unsightly sores in the spandex department.
Of course, in the event that they do show up, there will be no refunds.